Who Are You Really?

Identity is a powerful thing; it contains information on our ethnicity, our marital status, whether or not we are successful. And while every individual has the power to shape his or her own identity, I believe there are certain things a stranger will immediately associate you with, regardless of what type of person you truly are. Those of us born into a rich family would almost always have the newest shoes, the shiniest car, and a refreshing calm when considering future college loans: this is an example of somebody who is born into their identity. People can take one look at them and assess their bank account; while this person may do everything in their power to get people to see past the designer handbag, first impressions can definitely lay a hand in shaping your identity.

In high-school, stereotyping ties into identity. With over a thousand students populating campus, and new ones introduced each year, each individual can never truly know every student. But we can recognize them, their baggy jeans or their graphic tees, the stench of marijuana, the gothic novel underneath their arm, and we can form opinions from the identity that they themselves have made. Racism and sexism are issues that have plagued our generation, and many generations before us. The primal need to be the dominant race has molded a society that may not outwardly act on their feelings towards blacks, jews, women, but will always have a thought about them in the back of their mind.

We can make jokes about it now because our society, for the most part, has evolved past hate crimes and into a more understanding civilization than even just a hundred years ago. But in the back of our minds, whether we agree with it or not, we associate people with the identity they were born with: their race, their sex, their religion. We laugh when comedians mock blacks for the ghetto mannerisms because we have accepted that this stereotype is NOT a fact; but I was at a party lately where it was dominantly blacks, and all I would here was how ghetto the party was. Why? Because we look at people we don’t personally know, and we identify them with their stereotype. We see mothers and we know that while they may be successful, driven women of the workplace, we automatically assume that they, above their husbands, would stay home and raise the family, don the apron and do the cooking. These identities that we are born with are something that we can never escape. But I believe that, for the most part, we have the power to shape our own identities, although it may not affect strangers’ views on us. Ms. or Mrs. is an identity we very much control; the thousands of women a year who dye their hair blonde (me included) control this identity, although we are constant victims of blonde jokes.

While I would like to believe that we individuals completely shape our own identities, some of the most popular assumptions towards people derive from their race or their sex, an identity that they, for the most part, cannot change. But since we have evolved into a society that will mostly turn a blind eye to your skin color or Ms. or Mr. status and look instead into who you are as a person, I think I can safely say that identity is something that you control. We just have to remember that people will see what they want to see, unless you give them a chance to see something more.